General Terms and Conditions

General Terms and Conditions (as of November 2024)

The West German Genealogical Society eV (WGfF) offers services, website features, and new and used goods, which you can use or shop on the pages WGfF.de, WGfF.net, WGfF-DigiBib.de or their subpages free or after registration. The WGfF provides its services and products available to its general terms and conditions and under it Statutes. Because the details of the deals referenced product in the context of each listing.

Please read these terms carefully before using our services. By using or registering you agree to be bound by these conditions.

Contracting party

Vendor and contractor is the

Westdeutsche Gesellschaft für Familienkunde e.V., Bayenthalgürtel 30, 50968 Köln

Association Register: Amtsgericht Köln, register of associations number: 4572
Tax Number: 223 5922 0258 – Finanzamt Köln-West

VAT ID-No.: DE122948061

Electronic Communication

If you use one of our internet services, or send e-mails to us, you are communicating with us electronically. Also we will - communicate electronically via email or by publishing notices on our website with you - in addition to telephone contact or in the context of post-mailings. Therefore you are agreeing to, even for contractual purposes, to receive electronic communications from us. This applies to all approvals, notifications, publications and other communications that do not require by applicable mandatory legal provisions in writing or any other form of communication.

Copyright / further processing

You may not systematically extract without our explicit written permission no part of a WGfF services and / or re-use or disclose it to anyone. In particular, you may not, without our explicit written permission no data mining, use any robot or similar data collection and extraction programs to extract any substantial parts of WGfF services for reuse. You may make and / or publish your own database further without the explicit written permission of WGfF, the essential parts of our Services (for example, our prices, product information, contents of the Digital Library) included.

Licences and Accesses

Assuming compliance with these Terms and any applicable Service terms terms as well as the payment of attacking membership dues or fees the WGfF grants to you a limited, simple, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to access and non-commercial use of some of our services.

WGfF services must not be misused, and only as permitted by law. The rights granted by the WGfF expire if the user does not comply with these Terms of Use or Terms of Service, or as far as this is a prerequisite the membership ends. You may not use a service that we offer,

(1) in a manner that is suitable to interrupt the Service, or access to, damaging or affecting in any other way or
(2) for fraudulent purposes or in connection with a criminal offense or illegal activity or
(3) to cause annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety.

We reserve the right to withhold your services on the web, to close member accounts or remove or edit content, if you adjust any applicable law, these Terms or any other applicable rules or policies violated or services completely.

Your account and access codes

If you use one of our services, which requires this, you will be responsible for ensuring the confidentiality of your account and password and for restricting access to your computer. You agree that you will - to the extent permitted under applicable law - are responsible for all activities that occur under your account or password. You should take all necessary steps to ensure that your password is kept secret and securely stored and inform us immediately if you know or suspect that a third party has gained knowledge of your password or password is being used without authorization. You are responsible for ensuring that your information is accurate and complete to us and put us of changes to the information you provide in knowledge. You can see for WGfF mailing list or in WGfF shop and update itself much of the information that you have given us, and your account settings in the area of services.

Links to other websites

We assume no liability for the correctness and completeness and for the content of third party websites to which we refer in our services or which we have linked. As we have no influence on compliance with data protection regulations by third parties, you should consider separately the privacy statements offered in each case separately.

Data Protection

Name and contact details of the representative responsible for data processing as well as the representative responsible for data protection

The data privacy information pertains to data handling by:

The representative responsible for data privacy is reachable under the aforementioned address. Please address any communication for the attention of the representative responsible for data privacy, also via e-mail to datenschutz@wgff.net.

Storage of personal data as well as manner and purpose of its usage

a) While browsing the website
While visiting our websites www.wgff.de, www.wgff-shop.de, www.wgff-tz.de und www.wgff-mediabase.de, some information will be transmitted by the browser of your choice to our servers. The pieces of data will temporarily be saved in a so-called logfile without your input until automatically deleted:

• IP-address of the inquiring computer,
• Date and time of access,
• Name and URL of file,
• Website, from which the access originated (referrer URL),
• Browser in use and eventually operating system of the computer as well as name of internet service provider.

The following data will be processed with the following purposes:

• Establishment of a smooth connection to the websites,
• Convenient use of our websites,
• Evaluation of the system security and stability in addition to
• further administrative purposes.

The legal basis for the data processing is article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter f of the GDPR. Our justifiable interest is a result of the aforementioned purposes in terms of data collection. On no account do we use the data collected with the purpose of making inferences regarding you personally.
Furthermore, we do use cookies and data analysis service providers for the access of our websites. Further clarification regarding the privacy policy can be found under section "Cookies".

b) While subscription to our newsletter
Provided that explicit consent has been given in accordance with article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter a of the GDPR, your e-mail address is used in order to electronically deliver our newsletter periodically. For the purpose of receiving the newsletter, is the indication of the e-mail address sufficient.

Unsubscribing our newsletter is possible at any time, e.g. via a hyperlink on the end of each individual newsletter. Alternatively it is possible to express your wish to unsubscribe at any point in time via e-mail message directed to info@shop.wgff.de

Disclosure of data

The transmission of your personal data to third parties will not take place for purposes different from the below-mentioned.

We will only pass on your personal data to third-parties, when:

• you have given express consent according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter a of the GDPR,
• the transmission according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter f of the GDPR is necessary for the enforcement, exercise or defense of legal claims and there is no reason for the assumption that you have prevailing interests of non-disclosure of data worthy of protection.
• for the case that disclosure according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter c of the GDPR is necessary due to legal obligations and also
• these are legally permissible and necessary according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter b of the GDPR for the settlement of contractual relationships with you.

Cookies

We employ cookies on our website. Those are small files, which are generated automatically by your browser and are stored on your personal device (laptop, tablet, smartphone etc.), when our website is visited. Cookies do not create any damage to your device, contain no viruses, trojans or any kind of malware.

Information is stored in the cookie that is generated in connection with your device. This does not mean, however, that we obtain access to your identity.

On the one hand the use of cookies has the objective of designing more pleasant service offerings. With that in mind we employ so-called session-cookies in order to recognize if you have previously visited one of our websites. These get automatically erased after leaving our website.

Furthermore, we also employ temporary cookies which are stored in your device for a predetermined time frame for the optimization of user-friendliness. If you visit our website once again in order to gain access to our services, it will automatically be recognized that you have already visited us in the past as well as which entries and settings you had set up, so that you don’t need to repeat them.

On the other hand, we employ cookies in order to collect statistical data related to the website usage, so that we can evaluate the optimization of our offerings (see part 5). These cookies allow us to automatically recognize during a new visit to our website that you had already been with us. These cookies are automatically erased after a predefined time.

The data that is processed by the cookies are for the aforementioned purposes meant for the safeguarding of our justifiable interests as well as of those of third parties according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter f of the GDPR.

Most browsers accept cookies automatically. Nevertheless, you can set up your browser, so that no cookies are stored on your computer or that a notice is always shown before a new cookie is accepted. The complete blocking of cookies can lead however to you no longer being able to use all functionalities of our website.

Rights of affected parties

You have the right:

• according to article 15 of the GDPR, to demand disclosure of the personal data handled by us. Particularly, you can demand disclosure of the purpose for the usage of data, the categories of the personal data, the categories of the recipients to which the data was disclosed or will be, the planned storage time, the existence of the right of rectification, deletion, restriction of processing or objection, the existence of the right of complaint, the origin of your data if they were not collected by us, as well as the existence of an automatic decision-making process including profiling and, if applicable, meaningful particular details;
• according to article 16 of the GDPR, to demand the immediate rectification or completion of the data stored with us;
• according to article 17 of the GDPR, to demand the deletion of personal data stored with us, as long as their handling is not necessary for the exercise of the right of free speech and information, to the fulfillment of legal obligations, on grounds of the public interest or to the enforcement, exercise and defense of legal claims;
• according to article 18 of the GDPR, to demand the limitation of handling of personal data, as long as you are disputing their correctness, their handling is illegitimate, their deletion you notwithstanding refuse and we no longer require them, while you, however, do it for the enforcement, exercise and defense of legal claims or you have opposed the handling according to article 21 of the GDPR;
• according to article 20 of the GDPR, to demand to receive the personal data that you have made available to us, in a patterned, established and machine-readable format or to have transmitted to another person responsible;
• according to article 7 paragraph 3 of the GDPR, to revoke your once to us provided consent. The implication is that the handling of data based on that consent is no longer possible to continue in the future and
• according to article 77 of the GDPR, to complain before a regulatory authority. Generally, you can turn to the regulatory authority of your usual place of residence or work or of our legal counsel.

Right of objection

As long as your personal data is handled on the basis of justifiable interest according to article 6 paragraph 1 section 1 letter f of the GDPR, you have the right to object the handling of your personal data according to article 21 of the GDPR, if there are grounds due your special situation or if your objection is opposing direct advertising. On the latter case, you enjoy the right of objection in a general sense to which we will abide by without the submission of a reason.

If you’d like to make use of either your right of revocation or of objection, an e-mail message to the following address is sufficient:
info@wgff.net

Data security

We usually employ during your visit to our website the widespread SSL (Secure Socket Layer) protocol in connection with the respectively highest encryption level that is supported by your browser. Usually a 256 bit encryption is deployed. In the event that your browser does not support a 256 bit encryption, we resort to the 128 bit v3 technology. If a particular page of our internet presence is transmitted with encryption, you can identify it by the depiction of a key or closed lock on the inferior status bar of your browser.

By the way, we make use of adequate technical and organizational security measures in order to protect your data against incidental and deliberate manipulation, partial or total loss, deletion or against unauthorized access by third parties. Our security measures are continuously improved according to technological evolution.

Currentness and modification of this privacy policy

The privacy policy is up to date as of May 2018.

Due to the continuous development of our website and offerings related to it or due to modified legal or regulatory guidelines, it might become necessary to modify this privacy policy. The respectively most up-to-date privacy policy can be accessed and printed at any time under http://www.wgff.de/impressum.htm#datenschutz.

Changes in services or changes of use or sale

The WGfF reserves the right at any time to make changes to services, regulations, terms, including these terms and conditions and adjust the services. You are defeated by the General Terms and Conditions, contract terms and conditions of use in force at the time, you use WGfF services. If one of these conditions is held to be invalid, void or for any reason unenforceable, these rules shall be deemed severable and not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining provisions.

Warranty and liability

We make every effort to ensure that our services are available without interruption and our shipments are free of errors. By nature of the internet as well as through technical restrictions and interventions of our provider (e.g. during maintenance) or our consignor this cannot be guaranteed.

The WGfF liable only insofar as the damage was caused by an intentional or grossly negligent breach of duty WGfF or one of its legal representatives or agents. Excluded are claims for damages by the customer due to injury to life, limb, health or fundamental contractual obligations which must be necessarily met in order to achieve the contract aim.

Insofar as the liability of WGfF is excluded or limited, this also applies to the personal liability of employees, representatives and agents.

Purchaser may ask for a period of two years from the delivery of goods warranty rights and the repair or replacement of products purchased from the WGfF if this does not turn out to be flawed or as described. If the goods cannot be repaired or replaced within a reasonable time or not without difficulty, you can request a refund or price reduction.

If the subsequent performance is effected by way of replacement delivery, the purchaser is obliged to return the goods within 30 days to the WGfF at their expense. The return of the defective goods must be made in accordance with the statutory provisions. The WGfF reserves the right to assert under the statutory provisions for damages. As far as used goods are subject to the transaction and the buyer is not a consumer, the warranty is excluded. If the customer is a consumer, the warranty period for the purchase of used items shall be one year.

For the correctness of transmissions and transcripts offered from church records, dead notes, etc. no liability is accepted.

Possible claims of immaterial property rights

The WGfF respects the immaterial property rights of third parties. If you believe that your intellectual property rights have been used in a way that gives reason to suspect a violation, please let us know via the contact email address: info@wgff.de.

Contract and contract drafting

The offers shown are non-binding invitation to treat by the customer order, which the supplier can assume. Your order constitutes an offer to the WGfF to conclude a sales contract. If you place an order on our web-shop, we'll send you an e-mail confirming the receipt of your order and its details (order confirmation). This order confirmation does not constitute acceptance of your offer, but is only to inform you that your order has been received. A purchase contract is only concluded with the dispatch of our order confirmation via email to you or to the delivery of goods ordered.

The ordering process for contract conclusion comprises the following steps in the shop system:

- Selection of the offer, specifying the desired specification (e.g. number)
- Inserting of the offer to the cart
- Pressing the button "Checkout"
- Entering the billing and shipping address and possibly the member number
- If necessary select the payment method
- Verification and processing of the order and all entries
- Clicking on the button "Paid Order"
- Confirmation mail on our part to you that an order has been received.

Incorrect entries can be corrected by the customer during the ordering process. For this purpose, use a "Back" function offered in the application or, if this is missing, use the "back" button of the browser with subsequent correction of the data.

We store the treaty text of your order. You can print it after the order by clicking "Print" in the last step of the order. We will also send an order confirmation with your order data and our Terms and Conditions to the e-mail address you provided.

Orders can be placed next to the shop system via telephone, email or letter, whereby the ordering process for the conclusion of the contract comprises the following steps:

• Provision of order mail or phone order or a corresponding letter

Revocation policy

Right of Revocation

You have the right to revoke this contract within fourteen days without giving reasons. The revocation period shall be fourteen days from the day of which you or a third party nominated by you who is not the carrier took possession of the goods.

If the delivery consists staggered consignments, the date of the last instalment applies. If it concerns recurring items (e.g. subscription), the day of the first appropriation by one of the persons mentioned above is valid. If several facts of the matter apply, the last time is decisive.

In order to exercise your revocation, you must inform us, Book Distribution WGfF e.V., c/o Siegfried Haun, Meisingstr. 3, D-41363 Jüchen, Germany, Tel.: +49(0)221-277 59 443, email: info@shop.wgff.de, by means of a clear statement (e.g. a letter sent by post).

You may use a sample revocation form, this is not mandatory, however. You can download it from our website http://shop.wgff.de/en/sample-revocation-form. To observe the revocation period it shall be sufficient for you to send the notification of the exercising of the right of revocation before the expiry of the revocation period.

Consequences of Revocation

If you revoke this contract, we shall refund you all payments that we have received from you, including delivery costs  (with the exception of the additional costs arising from the fact that you chose a type of delivery other than the reasonable standard delivery offered by us), immediately and no later than within fourteen days of the date on which we received the notice of revocation of this contract.

For this repayment, we shall use the same method of payment that you used in the original transaction, unless you expressly agreed otherwise; under no circumstances will you be charged any fees for this repayment. We may withhold the repayment until we have received the goods back or until you have provided proof that you have sent the goods back, whichever is the earlier.

You must send back or transfer the goods to us ( Book Distribution WGfF e.V., c/o Siegfried Haun, Meisingstr. 3, D-41363 Jüchen, Germany, ) immediately and in all cases no later than fourteen days from the date on which you notify us of the revocation of this contract. This deadline shall be considered met if you send the goods before the expiry of the period of fourteen days.

You are responsible for the direct costs of returning the goods to us.

You shall pay for any diminished value of the goods only if this diminished value is attributable to your handling of the goods in any way other than what is necessary to ascertain the quality, nature and functioning of these.

Prices

All prices are final and include the respective applicable statutory value added tax. In yet sold used goods are, unless stated otherwise privately acquired pieces. According to § 25a UStG they are difference-taxed, so that an expulsion of the sales tax does not take place on the bill.

In addition to the final prices an additional charge, depending on the delivery service will be displayed before sending the order. Is there a right of revocation and you will make use of it, the customer bears the cost of returning.

Despite careful examination a small number of products may be labelled in our catalogue with the wrong price. We check the prices when we process your order and before we burden the payment. If a product has been labelled an incorrect price and the correct price is higher than the price on the website, we will contact you before shipment of the goods in order to ask you whether you want to buy the product at the correct price or cancel the order. If the correct price of a product is lower than our stated price, we will charge the lower amount and send you the product.

Minors

We do not offer products for sale to minors. Our products can be purchased by adults. If you are under 18, you may use or buy WGfF services or goods only with the participation of a parent or guardian.

Payment, retention of title, purchase on account

The buyer pays the purchase price of goods on invoice for delivery on the account / bank details of WGfF indicated on the invoice, or -at agreed fetch- in cash. Other payment methods are not currently offered and rejected. Payment on account is only possible for customers over 18 years. The invoice amount is due upon receipt of an invoice. The WGfF reserves the right not to offer certain payment methods in individual cases.

Each delivered product shall remain our property until full payment.

Delivery, Reservations and Customs

Unless otherwise agreed, delivery is to the shipping address given by the customer. On our website you will find information about the availability of products that are sold by the WGfF (e.g. on the product detail page). If it is determined during the processing of your order that you have ordered products not available, you will be informed. The legal rights of the purchaser remain unaffected.

The goods are shipped normally within 3 weeks..

If delivery to the customer is not possible, for example, if the customer is not present at the delivery address given by him, the Purchaser shall bear the costs of the unsuccessful delivery.

If you order products for delivery outside the EU, you are defeated import duties and taxes once the package reaches the specified destination. Any additional charges for customs clearance must be borne by you. We have no control over these charges. Customs regulations vary greatly from country to country, so you should contact your local customs authorities for more information. Furthermore, please note that you will be considered for orders as Introductory and all laws and regulations of the country in which you received the products, must comply with. Your privacy is important to us and we would like to draw the attention of our international customers to the fact that international deliveries of the opening and investigation are defeated by custom formalities.

Language, Jurisdiction and Applicable Law

The contract will be drawn up in German. The further processing of the contractual relationship takes place in the German language. There is only the law of the Federal Republic of Germany and excluding the CISG (CISG). For consumers, this only applies insofar there are no restrictions of legal provisions of the country in which the customer has his domicile or habitual residence. Jurisdiction in disputes is the seat of the provider.

The contract are available in English as well as in the German language. In the event of a dispute in this contract, the German language version of this contract shall prevail.

Salvatoric clause

The invalidity of any provision of these General Terms and Conditions does not affect the validity of the remaining provisions.